Multiple Czech Republic government websites were disrupted earlier this week due to a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. The police force and Prague Airport websites were also disrupted as a result of the cyber attack.
The sites were down for around two hours on Tuesday, October 24.
The website of the Crimea Platform, an international summit taking place in Prague, was also attacked.
Several sources allege that a pro-Russian group is behind the cyber attacks, with cyber security firm GenDigital claiming pro-Russian hackers NoName057 are the perpetrators.
Support for Ukraine a likely motive, sources say
The attacks began at midday, disrupting access to the websites of the interior ministry and the lower and upper houses of parliament for around two hours. The police force and Prague Airport websites were also offline until approximately 2pm. Most of the sites regained functionality after this time, but the government website was still largely inaccessible.
Later that afternoon the Czech government confirmed that no data had been stolen.
There was no impact on flights arriving or leaving Prague Airport, however according to a post by NoName057 on X, the portal for purchasing tickets had crashed.
Post by NoName057 on October 24, via X
Vít Rakušan, the Czech Republic’s Interior Minister, said that Russian state-sponsored hackers were the main suspects.
During the Crimea Platform summit, which was taking place in Prague at the time of the attacks, Czech government officials highlighted the country’s support for Ukraine in the ongoing war with Russia, a possible motivation for the attacks according to sources.
Who are NoName057?
NoName057 is a pro-Russian hacker group that first declared itself in March 2022 after launching DDoS attacks against media outlets in Ukraine. It has since claimed responsibility for a number of cyber-attacks on government agencies and media in the US and Europe.
In June this year, the group announced it was behind an attack on the official website of The Port of Rotterdam, the biggest port in Europe.
In the same month, Swiss government websites were taken offline after a series of DDoS attacks ahead of a video address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. NoName057 were later revealed to be responsible.
At least five Italian banks had their websites flooded with huge amounts of junk data after Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s visit to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv earlier this year.
The group primarily uses encrypted messaging service Telegram (and more recently, X), to claim responsibility for their cyber attacks, as well as make threats against entities it believes to be enemies of Russia.